Backlash against political correctness
This is the third time a Reader's Corner article tackled the subject of political correctness and the issues it brings to modern conjectures. Previous articles looked at parallels between the size of the support behind United States presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton with how the general public feels about political correctness. I said that another article would be on this matter after the election and warned that emphasizing the political incorrectness of Trump's statements could very well increase the support he had, and in hindsight that seems to be the case, as the Republican Party emerged victorious.
Now many, especially liberals in America, have started to ask why would people are frustrated with political correctness when its sole purpose is to eradicate derogatory words and sayings from everyday language by making them unacceptable in the language of the media and notable figures whether they are from the political or entertainment worlds.
However, we journalists forget that everything is preferable in moderation. The advance of civil rights in the last quarter of the 20th century along with the early 21st country convinced us that it was time to go full steam ahead with every single social issue we had. After all, we now had the X, Y or any number of other generations that were more open minded than their predecessors. Doing so, we became part of a mentality that shuns all that is different in an attempt to isolate racists, bigots and prejudiced people from the general public. This would make their ideas less endearing to future generations after all. Yet along the way, we started to slap these labels on so freely and vindictively, they started to lose their meaning along with the negative weight they carried. A single slip of the tongue or a minor disagreement on any number of social issues with the established sense of what is right became enough reason to condemn that person to isolation by calling them fascist, racist or any other number of words - sometimes all of them together. In their enthusiasm, these false flags and unjustifiable lynchings warped the main reason behind political correctness in the eye of a sizeable part of the American public.
Not only did we forget moderation, we also forgot cooperation. Even after the presidential elections ended, you could find any number of pundits, political analysts or talk show guests lumping all Trump supporters as backwards racists who voted for a misogynist. This was the main reason behind the backlash against political correctness in this race. This was also the reason why all the labels thrown at Trump didn't matter with the public whether they were well deserved or not. Excessiveness brought emptiness. And most importantly, we forget that while radicals paved the way for social equalities, moderation made them permanent and acceptable to the general public.
Now many, especially liberals in America, have started to ask why would people are frustrated with political correctness when its sole purpose is to eradicate derogatory words and sayings from everyday language by making them unacceptable in the language of the media and notable figures whether they are from the political or entertainment worlds.
However, we journalists forget that everything is preferable in moderation. The advance of civil rights in the last quarter of the 20th century along with the early 21st country convinced us that it was time to go full steam ahead with every single social issue we had. After all, we now had the X, Y or any number of other generations that were more open minded than their predecessors. Doing so, we became part of a mentality that shuns all that is different in an attempt to isolate racists, bigots and prejudiced people from the general public. This would make their ideas less endearing to future generations after all. Yet along the way, we started to slap these labels on so freely and vindictively, they started to lose their meaning along with the negative weight they carried. A single slip of the tongue or a minor disagreement on any number of social issues with the established sense of what is right became enough reason to condemn that person to isolation by calling them fascist, racist or any other number of words - sometimes all of them together. In their enthusiasm, these false flags and unjustifiable lynchings warped the main reason behind political correctness in the eye of a sizeable part of the American public.
Not only did we forget moderation, we also forgot cooperation. Even after the presidential elections ended, you could find any number of pundits, political analysts or talk show guests lumping all Trump supporters as backwards racists who voted for a misogynist. This was the main reason behind the backlash against political correctness in this race. This was also the reason why all the labels thrown at Trump didn't matter with the public whether they were well deserved or not. Excessiveness brought emptiness. And most importantly, we forget that while radicals paved the way for social equalities, moderation made them permanent and acceptable to the general public.